Writing for Vaudeville eBook

CHAPTER XVII

“BUSINESS” IN THE PLAYLET

In considering the “business” of the playlet,
we have come to the place where it would seem that
writing must be left behind and the function of the
producer entered upon. For business is the detail
of stage action and movement. But, while it is
the peculiar function of the producer to invent and
to incorporate into the playlet little bits of everyday
movements of the characters to lend the effect of
real life to the mimic picture, it is the province
of the writer—­in reducing his words to the
lowest possible number, in an effort to secure that
“economy of attention” which is the foundation
of all art—­to tell as much of his story
as he can by actions that speak even louder than words.
Every great playwright is as much a producer as he
is a writer.

As we saw in Chapter VII, “business” includes
every movement an actor makes while he is on the stage.
Thus a facial expression may be called “business,”
if it lends a peculiar significance to a line.
And a wild leap of a man on horseback through a window—­this
has actually been done in a vaudeville act—­is
also called business. In fact everything, from
“mugging,” [1] walking about, sitting
down, picking up a handkerchief, taking off or putting
on a coat, to the wordless scenes into which large
parts of the story are condensed and made clear solely
by situation—­everything is called “business.”
But to differentiate the actor’s part from
the work of the playwright, I shall arbitrarily call
every action which is as indivisible from acting as
facial play, “pantomime”; while I shall
employ the word “business” to express the
use of movement by the playwright for the purpose
of condensing large parts of the story and telling
it wordlessly.

[1] “Mugging,” considered by some to be
one of the lowest forms of comedy, is bidding for
laughter by facial contortions unrelated to the action
or the lines—­making the scene subservient
to the comical faces made by the actor.

1. The Part Business Plays in the Dramatic [2]

[2] The impossibility of keeping separate the designing
and the writing of business, will be seen as
the chapter progresses, therefore I shall treat both
freely in one.

Let us turn to that part of the third scene of “The
System” where The Eel and Goldie—­who
have been given their liberty “with a string
to it” by Inspector McCarthy in his anxiety to
catch Officer Dugan red-handed—­are “up
against it” in their efforts to get away from
town. They have talked it all over in Goldie’s
flat and The Eel has gone out to borrow the money
from Isaacson, the “fence.” Now when
The Eel closes Goldie’s door and runs downstairs,
Goldie listens intently until the outer door slams,
then begins to pack. She opens the trunk first,
gets her jacket from the couch where she has thrown
it, puts it in the trunk and then goes up into the
bedroom and gets a skirt. She shakes the skirt
as she comes down stage. Then a long, low whistle
is heard—­then the rapping of a policeman’s
club.